Legion of the Damned

Prologue Signs and Wonders

The deafening silence of carnage after the fact.

An ocean of bolt-riddled bodies, as far as the eye could see. Corpse crests and blasted troughs, black with blood and swarming with flesh lice. Plunging breakers of ragged remains and shattered armour, marking the abrupt end of some maniacal charge. The trampled mulch of the fallen: deviants, the daemon-possessed and warriors in desecrated plate. Hideous faces of indescribable rage. A battle-smear of wretched flesh, hammered out of its misery by some merciful trajectory. The Emperor himself, it seemed, guiding the path of each blessed bolt and blast.

Approbator Vaskellen Quast of the Ordo Obsoletus pulled his scented neckerchief down and brought the grille of the meme-vox to his lips. ‘Twenty-seven fifty-eight hours, Central Planetary Time. Certus-Minor – Adeptus Ministorum cemetery world.’ The stench of gore steaming in the morning heat seared his nostrils, prompting the young acolyte to snort, hock and spit. ‘Praga subsector, Segmentum Obscurus.’

Quast clambered carefully across a ridge of corrupt forms. His advance was frustrated by more than just bodies. Beneath the carpet of bone-jutting butchery lay the cemetery world surface: a crowded expanse of ornate tombstones, mausolea and funerary sculpture. Every square metre of dirt was devoted to the art of burial and the infrastructure that served that hallowed purpose. Space on Certus-Minor existed at a premium, with grave plots and baroque memorial markers almost built one on top of another. This created a landscape of cold, crafted stone. A graveyard on a planetary scale.

The approbator could see little of the surface from where he was standing, covered as it was with the splattered remains of those who had never reached the solace of an Imperial grave, and those who didn’t deserve one. Knee-deep in the Chaotics and carnage, Quast felt tense with overwhelming disgust. It was more than just the stench and warming rot. He felt that his very soul was in danger just standing in the presence of the unhallowed dead – that the corrupting influence of the Ruinous Powers was still in evidence in the mutilated remains and that it was aware of his God-Emperor-fearing footsteps.

Behind the acolyte hovered a Valkyrie carrier, as black as a silhouette against the pearly cloud cover of the cemetery world sky and marked only with the sinister insignia of the Ordo Obsoletus. About him stalked Inquisitorial storm troopers from the 52nd Ranger Pelluciad, all field masks, humming weaponry and camo-carapace.

‘Ruling pontifex and planetary governor,’ Quast continued, ‘one Erasmus Oliphant. Tithe grade: Solutio Tertius. Population at last Administratum census estimated at one million Imperial souls. Certus-Minor, revised estimates, post-atrocities: zero.’

The Cholercaust had built its fearful reputation on such barbaric efficiency. The Blood God’s servants couldn’t help themselves. Survivors weren’t a strategic consideration. The Slayer cared little for the tales of victims-in-waiting and what others might do with such information. Its tactics were always the same: uncompromising, overwhelming and savage. Where hearts beat with the defiance of life, the goremongers raged, honouring only the razored edge and baptising worlds in torrents of blood.

‘Hadria, Dregeddon IV, L’Orient, Callistus Mundi, Port Koronach, among a hundred other worlds, all similarly butchered. All victims of the Cholercaust Blood Crusade. All planets on the path of the Keeler Comet.’

Quast’s vox-bead chirped. ‘Proceed.’

‘Sir, the Providence reports that a large vessel has just translated in-system.’

‘Markings and registration?’

‘Still collating that information, sir. I can tell you that it has achieved high orbit.’

‘Probably a Ministorum heavy transport, bringing in penitents and frater labour from Bona Phidia. Get a visual. Keep me informed. Quast out.’

The approbator let his eyes linger on the charred mountain of rubble that was Obsequa City. The smouldering ruins before Quast had been a beautiful, baroque metrapol. A vision of towers, steeples and spires. Stained-glass and rockrete, dark with age, thrusting for the heavens with reverent majesty. With nearly every square metre of dirt on Certus-Minor devoted to the dead, even the city was considered an extravagance. Like a tiny, ecclesiastical hive, Obsequa City comprised bethels, basilicas and cathedrals that were built tall and tight. The narrow alleys and passages were steep and cobbled, leading up to the crowning monument – the heart of the city in both a physical and spiritual sense – the Umberto II Memorial Mausoleum.

The huge dome of the vault had once dominated the city skyline. Now it was a blasted remnant. A demolished edifice, collapsed in on itself – open and exposed to the elements. It had originally been built to honour and house the bones of Umberto II – Ecclesiarch, High Lord of Terra and prosecuter of innumerable wars of faith. Under Umberto, the Ecclesiarchy’s influence across the galaxy grew and the forces of darkness in and around the Eye of Terror made precious little progress. With Umberto’s leadership, the common faithful of the Imperium rose up and took the fight back to the Ruinous Powers, standing shoulder to shoulder with their brothers and sisters in the Imperial Guard and the Emperor’s Angels of Death. Ancient Terran scholars ascribed the near two thousand years of uneasy peace between the Eleventh Black Crusade and the Gothic War largely to the legacy of Umberto’s efforts in the segmentum.

Quast watched the frater burn teams clear bodies about the wrecked city. They were uncovering the arterial routes of the necroplex – the labyrinth of lychways and paths that ran through the crowded memorial burial plots, mausolea and cenoposts. With the main roads leading into Obsequa City clear of death and destruction, the Adeptus Ministorum forces had started to move in heavy equipment and excavators.

Dig-teams swarmed across the city rubble and the ruins of the great Mausoleum. The cemetery world already had a new planetary governor, Pontifex Clemenz-Krycek, newly arrived from St Ethalberg with manpower and instructions to purge the hallowed ground of Certus-Minor of the taint of corruption. The irresistible bureaucracy of the Imperium implemented even in the face of carnage and catastrophe. Quast had felt it prudent to meet Clemenz-Krycek before initiating his investigations. He told the pontifex little of his true purpose there. The driven ecclesiarch seemed not to care, engaged as he was with the small army of frater militia faithful that were piling and incinerating the corrupt forms of the battle-dead and excavating the ruins of the mausoleum. Quast found that the pontifex’s vows of devotion to the God-Emperor had done nothing to quell the fire of ambition burning in his veins. Clemenz-Krycek clearly hoped to find Umberto II’s bones intact in the spiritual stronghold of the underground vault. Safe from the corruption of Chaos. Even without the ecclesiarch’s bones, the pontifex was boldly heralding Umberto II’s sacred remains as responsible for the halting of the Cholercaust Blood Crusade.

The investigation of such assertions was well within the remit of the Ordo Obsoletus, but information already in Quast’s possession made him question such a possibility – that and the fire behind the pontifex’s eyes. Clemenz-Krycek was already mooting recommendations for Umberto II’s veneration to the rank of Imperial Saint – a call that, if approved by the High Ecclesiarch, would undoubtedly improve the pontifex’s own prospects in the ranks of the Adeptus Ministorum.

A rusted breastplate creaked underfoot and, with a crack, the approbator’s boot slipped down into the stinking chest cavity of a fallen giant. Its armour was a god-pleasing red and one shoulder plate was spiked like an ocean urchin. A studded gauntlet still hate-clenched the shaft of a brute axe, unable – even in death – to surrender the weapon. The monster’s helmet was missing and the monstrous head with it. As Quast’s boot sank into corruption, liquefied tissue spilled from the neck brace, thick with squirming flesh lice.

‘Merda!’ Quast spat in gutter Gothic, flicking gobbets of rot from the toe of his boot. The approbator shook his head. He was a savant, a researcher – not a field operative. What he had learned aboard the Ordo Obsoletus Black Ship Providence, however, was too important to leave to another. If he had found evidence of an authentic miracle – an event beyond human phenomena, alien curiosity or the pollution of Chaos – then it was his solemn duty to ask challenging questions and hunt for elusive answers. Answers his venerable master, Inquisitor Ehrensperger, had charged him to find.

Quast went to scrape the sole of his boot on the sculpted finish of the Chaos Space Marine’s other shoulder plate, only to find himself staring down the brass throat of a fang-filled maw. The symbol of the fell xiith Legion, wrought in pure hate. The World Eaters.

Quast swiftly retracted his foot, fearful that the effigy itself might assume a bloodthirsty life and snap shut. There had been other Blood Crusades. The Odium Wars. The Coming of the Brazen Host. The Dominion of Fire. The Black Crusade of the Daemon Prince Doombreed. But not since Armageddon’s First War had so many berserker brethren of the World Eaters Traitor Legion gathered under one banner.

‘Approbator?’

‘Carry on, sergeant.’

The Inquisitorial storm troopers brought forth a prisoner. She was naked but for the scraps of filthy, feral world hide that preserved her modesty. Her matted hair trailed down her back and her flesh was the canvas upon which primitive tattoos were carved and inked. Her emaciated form crawled across the butchery like a hound on a scent, while the two troopers flanked and followed, holding her between them on metal poles and lanyards. The savage began clawing at a mauled body draped across a gravestone that was carved in the fashion of the Imperial aquila.

‘Sir, looks like the witch has something.’

Quast wiped his boot on the scalp of a dead cultist and turned back to approach the feverish psyker. She froze with her bare back to them, and then without warning started thrashing this way and that. The lanyards around her neck bit into her thin flesh and the storm troopers on the ends of the poles were yanked back and forth. The Ranger Pelluciad sergeant called to Quast to hold his position.

The witch returned to stillness before turning her head and snarling at the approbator. Her bright eyes rolled over blood-red like a wine glass filling with claret and her entire face suddenly contorted with an agonising rage. She looked along the pole at one of her storm trooper sentinels like a thing possessed. The witch suddenly convulsed and spewed forth a stream of bloody vomit. The blistering gruel splattered the Ranger’s helmet and body armour. He tore at his chin strap and started screaming something about burning.

‘Hold her down!’ the sergeant bawled, and to this end the remaining storm trooper brutally thrust the pole at the witch and the witch to the ground. ‘Reinforcements. Now!’ the sergeant called into his vox-bead, before drawing his hellpistol and charging across the slaughterscape at the struggling storm trooper and his charge. The trooper had forced the thrashing psyker right down into the stinking carpet of rent armour, jutting bones and festering bodies.

‘Sir!’

‘Hold her, damn it!’

But the witch was gone. The wasted creature had somehow slipped down into the layers of rotting flesh and ceramite, crawling – swimming almost – through the disintegrating carcasses. The pole suddenly followed, whipped into the cadaver-mound and taking the second storm trooper with it. ‘G’Vera!’ the sergeant called into his vox-link. ‘Corporal, talk to me!’

The mound exploded. A fount of blood blasted up out of the bodies and at the Certusian dawn-sky. How much of it belonged to G’Vera and how much to the surrounding dead was impossible to tell. What was certain was that the corporal was now one of them.

The sergeant began scanning the ground about them with his hellpistol. A limb twitched here. A body moved there. The witch was certainly on the move. ‘Sir, arm yourself,’ the storm trooper instructed. The approbator had been so sickened at the spectacle that it was the meme-vox that he still clenched in one white-knuckled hand, rather than his laspistol. Fumbling for the weapon, Quast drew his sidearm.

The witch was suddenly before him, slithering out from the slaughter like a serpent. Her body was completely naked now and slick with black blood and spoilage. Her eyes burned hate and her lips had retracted horribly like a predatory cat.

‘Approbator!’ the sergeant screamed, but Quast found that he couldn’t move. Fear clouded his mind and all he could do was gawp as the possessed witch hissed and came in so close as to touch her bloody forehead to his own.

There was a flash. The furious face suddenly disappeared. Snapped out of view. Blasted away. Quast stood, blinking. His face was speckled with the witch’s blood and his laspistol still felt a world away. Turning, the approbator saw the reinforcements that the sergeant had called for. Storm trooper sharpshooters, swiftly descended from the Valkyrie transport, with hellguns to chins and scopes to visors. They had executed the psyker from some distance away with a cool nerve, precision marksmanship and supercharged las-fire. As they brought their weapons down, Quast nodded in silent respect.

The sergeant was suddenly beside him, his boot on the witch’s ribcage and his hellpistol pointed at what was left of her head. The storm trooper put three more blasts into the creature before he was satisfied.

‘Freaks,’ the sergeant spat. ‘Can’t stand them, sir.’

‘She was no doubt possessed by some residual evil she found amongst the bodies,’ Quast announced, trying to re-establish some kind of authority over the situation, even if it was only intellectual. He found himself looking down on the jumbled cadavers: the hellspawn, Traitor Guardsmen and degenerate World Eaters.

‘How are you, sir?’

‘Better now, sergeant,’ Quast managed.

‘Approbator, perhaps we should–’

‘Continue,’ Quast interjected. ‘Perhaps, sergeant, we should continue.’ He holstered his laspistol and nodded at the ordo Valkyrie. ‘Bring me another.’

The sergeant hesitated, before nodding. ‘As you wish, approbator,’ he said, before marching off towards the Valkyrie transport. He left Quast alone with the dead and his thoughts.

‘The question…’ Quast began again, activating the meme-vox and wiping blood from his cheeks with a silk scarf,‘ …is not what ended this world. The Cholercaust clearly did that. The question is, what ended the Cholercaust?’

Inquisitorial records often identified the Blood God’s favoured operating in wretched warbands roaming the galaxy. Greater concentrations were rare, since the xiith Legion’s primordial hate seemed to extend to brother-slayers as well as the innocents of the Imperium. The Cholercaust had been different, however. The planetary populations upon whom it descended were always slaughtered to the last man, woman and child. Failed Adeptus Astartes interventions and Imperial Navy gauntlets had confirmed large numbers of ancient World Eaters vessels in the screaming cultist armada, which seemed to grow with every conquest. Some of those frigates and cruisers identified hadn’t been seen since the Horus Heresy, thousands of years before.

Little was known about the champion that led the Blood Crusade, the maniac who had managed the impossible and gathered so many of his murderous brothers to one cause and objective. He was known only as ‘the Pilgrim’ and led his vast host with religious conviction, following the strange path of a blood-red comet. Celestial cartographers believed it to be the Keeler Comet, a long-period body with a highly eccentric orbit, recorded to have passed through both Segmentum Obscurus and Segmentum Solar nearly ten thousand years before. Euphrati Keeler, the remembrancer of great antiquity, immortalised the comet over El’Phanor in The Ancient Traveller, a pict rumoured to hang in the Imperial Palace and reproduced across the Imperium. The comet had found the galaxy much-changed upon its most recent return. The xenos empire of the eldar had fallen, the Imperium had been shattered by civil war and the colossal warp storm known as the Eye of Terror had erupted in its path.

As the Keeler Comet blasted out of the immateriality of the Eye, it became apparent that it too had changed. A blood-red beacon, it appeared to wander with a mind of its own and trailed in its wake the Pilgrim and his Cholercaust Blood Crusade. The daemons, cultists and World Eaters seemed to believe that the cursed comet embodied the will of their Chaos god and would lead them across the stars in a celebration of slaughter, right to the Imperium’s finest and Holy Terra itself.

That was until the comet appeared in the skies of a tiny cemetery world in the Praga subsector. Until the Cholercaust came to Certus-Minor and the Blood God’s butchers became the butchered.

A shadow screamed above. The thunder of engines passed straight through Quast and an involuntary instinct shocked the approbator into ducking his head and dropping into a crouch amongst the rot. The wash of the thruster trail bathed the area about Quast in a dry heat. Squinting through the blaze of afterburning engines, the acolyte stood and watched the craft rocket across the corpse-strewn necroplex before banking and taking in the ruins of Obsequa City in a double pass.

Even serving in the ranks of the Holy Emperor’s Inquisition, Quast had only seen such a craft once before. It was a Thunderhawk gunship, the Adeptus Astartes’ fearsome steed amongst the stars. Spinning around, the approbator saw that another had punched through the sheen of pearly cloud, dropping silently like the first in a controlled free-fall, thrusters ready to snatch it from gravity’s embrace and slingshot the gunship across the cemetery world surface. A swarm of gunships followed, spearing down through the heavens in formation, before peeling off to take position above the killing fields, around the demolished city.

‘Sir, the vessel has made itself known to us,’ the vox-bead in Quast’s ear announced.

‘Proceed.’

‘Adeptus Astartes battle-barge Cerberus. Golden Throne, she’s huge.’

‘To which Chapter does this blessed vessel belong?’ Quast pushed.

‘The Excoriators, approbator.’

Quast nodded. It made sense. Among the warped and wretched servants of Chaos, the acolyte had come across numerous Adeptus Astartes dead, all armoured in the holy plate of the Excoriators Chapter. The defenders of a doomed world.

‘Have the captain greet the Cerberus and inform the battle-barge commander of our presence in orbit and on the planet surface. Extend my compliments and that of the ordo, then beg an audience for myself with the ranking Adeptus Astartes among their number.’

‘What are the Emperor’s Angels doing here, sir?’

‘I do not know,’ the approbator admitted, ‘but I intend to find out. Quast out.’

The acolyte left the Valkyrie and its storm trooper contingent and struck out across the slaughter. He walked for the ruined city and the gathering of gunships that hovered with ominous intent above the carnage. Clambering across the twisted dead and the expanse of tombstones beneath, Quast spoke into his meme-vox.

‘The Excoriators,’ he said, out of breath. ‘Battle-brothers of the Great Dorn’s seed. Their reputation is for fearsome feats of stamina and attrition. The Codex Astartes records the Excoriators as created from the ranks of the Imperial Fists post-Heresy, during the dark days of the Second Founding. This in recognition of their stalwart defence of the Imperial Palace during the Siege of Terra.’

The approbator’s eyes settled upon a particularly horrific visage, daemonflesh that leered murderous lust at Quast, even after its destruction and banishment. For a moment the corpse-thing held his horrid attention before the acolyte forced his eyes closed and stumbled on across the battlefield. ‘The Excoriators are listed in the Mythos Angelica Mortis as one of the Astartes Praeses,’ Quast continued, ‘those Space Marine Chapters charged with the solemn duty of guarding the Eye of Terror and the vulnerable regions of Imperial space bordering.’

He slipped a small pair of magnoculars from the folds of his robes and scanned the dun-white lengths of the Excoriators Thunderhawks. ‘Markings indicate the presence of the Third, Sixth and Eighth Companies. Three companies and a Chapter battle-barge suggests an undertaking of extreme importance. Cross reference with Telepathica transmittal 44L-21-Digamma/Theta, intercepted from the Stroika-Six Observium Array.’

The approbator attempted to make his presence known to the nearest Thunderhawk. He held up his ordo identification and waved his arm at the craft. The pilot took little notice of the tiny Quast, amongst the bodies and funeral sculpture, and the craft held its station above a corpse-strewn blast crater. The lead Thunderhawk, the scout ship that had preceded the formation of gunships, took another pass, however, once more prompting Quast to crouch down in the blood and the mire.

Grit and grave dust whipped up about the approbator, and turning, Quast came to regard the Thunderhawk that had led the formation down through the thick cloud cover. Its prow section drifted up behind him, hovering like some great predator. Quast stood up in the beast-craft’s sights, his robes thrashing about him in the squall of its engines. The tempest invested cadavers with momentary life as bodies trembled and mortis-stiff limbs rocked in the backwash of the Thunderhawk’s thrusters.

Once again Quast held out his identification, finding himself turning and stumbling as the Thunderhawk circled, the craft’s tail gliding around while the armoured cockpit, heavy bolters and troop section remained fixed on the approbator. The gunship’s engines, landing gear and weaponry gleamed with sacred oils and clear maintenance; however, its armour was sallow and abused. The flash-scarring of las-blasts accompanied soot-smeared missile strikes and a nosetip-to-tail mauling of bolt plucks and heavy-gauge auto-fire.

As the bay ramp opened, Excoriators Space Marines filed down the incline and dropped to the ground below in two flanking lines. The Excoriators moved with solemn purpose, the compact brutality of their boltguns breaking up the curvilinear lines of their ceramite. The plate itself was a dirty ivory – shabby in appearance against the polished gleam of the torso cabling – and above the scorn of their half-moon helmet grilles, a pair of dark optics burned with resolution.

The battered cream of their armour became immediately splattered with the ichor of the dead. With the crouch landing of each armoured Angel, Quast fancied he could feel the flesh below him quake. As the gunship circled, the deploying Excoriators began fanning out, boltguns aimed at the carpet of carnage and helmets methodically scanning from left to right. Turning his magnoculars on the other Thunderhawks, Quast found that they too had delivered their Adeptus Astartes payloads to the battlefield about the smoking remains of Obsequa City. And they too seemed to be doing more than a reconnaissance sweep. The Excoriators were looking for something. Or someone.

As the howling wind grew about him, Quast lowered the glasses. The Thunderhawk had completed its deployment and now closed on the approbator. The last thing that the acolyte wanted was confusion, or to cause offence, and so he kept his ordo identification stretched out in front of him, that the living arsenal of the Emperor knew that he was no enemy of the Imperium.

A final figure stepped out of the shadows of the troop bay. His steps were those of a warrior bearing the burden of great age and rank, and as he waited on the edge of the ramp, the Thunderhawk effortlessly drifted forwards. Quast felt like they were both in the eye of a storm. The acolyte staggered back as the gunship rolled right up to him. The Excoriator stepped off the ramp and onto the battlefield. The ramp behind him closed and the craft gently banked and peeled off, leaving the two of them amongst the calm and quiet of the massacre.

Quast was drowned in the shadow of the ceramite hulk. Like the Thunderhawk from which he’d stepped, the Excoriator’s armour was blasted and scarred. Unlike his superhuman brethren, however, this figure was decked in battle-plate of deepest black. A blizzard of bolt craters blemished its dark surface, while the criss-cross of blade slashes and claw scratches scored the plate into a mosaic blaze. This once again contrasted with the adamantium gleam of its cables, casings and Imperial aquila, unfolding its glorious wings across the warrior’s broad chest. His scuffed gauntlet clenched a great crozius, beneath the mirrored blades of its sculpted eagle head. The shaft of the power weapon extended all the way to the ground and the giant used it like a staff as he took his first steps across the felled bodies towards the approbator.

‘Approbator Quast?’ the Adeptus Astartes rumbled. When Quast didn’t answer, the Excoriator removed his helmet. He peered down at the acolyte over his chestplate, revealing his mangled features, a patchwork of ugly stitching cutting his ancient face into quarters.

Quast couldn’t quite find his words in the presence of the Angel. Neither could he hold the intensity of the Excoriator’s dark eyes, and found his own drifting down and across the detail of the warrior’s scarred battle-plate. Unconsciously leaning in, Quast saw that adorning each nick, each sword slash and bullet hole was an inscription, scratched in High Gothic lettering. The battle-plate was covered in such markings, each gouge and las-burn bearing its own notation, dates and locations: 221751.M41 Gethsemane; 435405.M41 Delleria Secundus; 997640.M41 Mallastabergiii . From the dun sheen of the ivory armour worn by the Excoriators beyond, Quast assumed their plate bore the same mixture of script and scarring.

‘Approbator?’

‘Yes,’ Quast managed, lowering his ordo identification and looking up. ‘It was my vessel that hailed your mighty battle-barge.’

‘And I thank you for your concision,’ the Excoriator said. ‘I know you broke with the protocol of your Holy Ordo. In turn forgive me the forthright nature of our approach. For the Adeptus Astartes, like the Emperor’s Inquisition, there is often much to accomplish and little time. I am Santiarch Balshazar, Chapter Chaplain of the Excoriators, and I represent the interests of Chapter Master Ichabod, here on this cemetery world.’

‘Vaskellen Quast,’ the acolyte replied. ‘And I represent Lord Ehrensperger and the interests of the Ordo Obsoletus on this planet.’ Quast tried to hold the stony gaze of the Excoriators Chaplain but failed a second time.

‘The Ordo Obsoletus?’

‘We are an ordo minoris, my lord. Santiarch, may I offer my condolences to your Chapter during the test of these times. I understand that the entire Fifth Company was lost in garrisoning this world against the predations of Chaos.’

‘Duly noted, approbator. Might you tell me what the Inquisition’s interest in our misfortunes might be?’

Quast felt the crushing weight of the Angel’s expectation. The authority of seeming immortality in his grave words. The fearful insistence of the Space Marine’s physical presence.

‘The interest of the Ordo Obsoletus extends to your own interest, Santiarch,’ Quast responded with growing confidence.

‘Just like the Inquisition,’ the Santiarch replied. ‘To reply in riddles. Are the Excoriators to suffer the indignity of investigation, approbator?’ Balshazar asked. When Quast didn’t respond, the Chaplain continued. ‘The Emperor’s Angels come to Certus-Minor to bury brothers, search for survivors and recover our sacred seed. I suffer your aspersions only to achieve that end all the faster. Now, approbator, tell me, have you encountered any of my battle-brethren?’

‘Yes, Santiarch,’ Quast confirmed. ‘Many of them. All dead, I regret. Some of their bodies are spread out across the battlefield beyond, but the greatest concentration lie about the ruins of Obsequa City. I wish I could assist you further but the Cholercaust is absolute in its insistence to leave us nought but corpse witnesses.’

‘Thank you,’ the Santiarch replied soberly and strode across the slaughter towards the demolished city.

‘Three companies and a Chapter battle-barge,’ Quast said as the giant passed, causing the Chaplain to grind to a furious pause. ‘Withdrawn from active duty garrisoning the Eye of Terror? That seems a great outlay for such a solemn mission.’

Balshazar turned dangerously, and Quast became very aware of the gleaming blades that adorned the Chaplain’s death-dealing staff of office. ‘And what would you know of deployments and the Emperor’s Angels, mortal, having existed for all but a galactic blink in the greater scheme of the Imperium?’

‘Nothing, Santiarch. I beg of you. Explain them to me, for I fear you are not here on this dead world just for the bodies of your fallen brothers.’ Quast gestured about the battlefield at the hovering Thunderhawks and swarms of Excoriators methodically picking through the annihilation. ‘What are you looking for, Santiarch? The Adeptus Astartes and the Holy Inquisition have a history of cautious cooperation. Let us build on that heritage. Perhaps I can help you. Perhaps we can help each other. Perhaps together we might truly come to understand what happened here.’

‘You are bold for one so young, approbator. I hope your master understands how incorrigible and stupid you really are.’

‘He does, Lord Santiarch,’ Quast returned. ‘It is undoubtedly the reason he sent me.’

Balshazar stared at the acolyte. This time, Quast held his nerve and stared right back. ‘Santiarch, please.’

‘The Adeptus Astartes do not often share their shame so publically,’ the Excoriator said finally. ‘The Fifth Company requested reinforcement. The Cerberus was en route to Certus-Minor to answer our brothers’ call and halt the progress of the Cholercaust. We failed. We failed to reach our battle-brethren in time and they faced an unstoppable enemy alone and in our absence. Our battle-barge was delayed by strange warp currents in the wake of the crimson comet. Our approach vector was direct but flawed, as was my intention in ordering it. If we had not encountered such problems then we might have been here to fight side by side with our brothers and perhaps prevent their destruction.’

Quast nodded. He chose his words carefully.

‘Santiarch, I do not doubt the truth of your tribulations and the misfortunes that resulted, but we both know that the Cerberus is not here to reinforce the Fifth Company.’

The Excoriators Chaplain began a livid and inevitable advance.

‘You would tempt me, mortal, in a place already sodden with bloodshed?’

Quast stumbled back, his heart battering the inside of his ribcage. He tripped back over a severed limb and landed on his backside in the remains of a ruined cadaver. With the Space Marine towering above him, Quast reached inside his robe pockets and produced a vellum scroll which he offered up to the furious Excoriator.

‘The Fifth Company did request reinforcement but had little expectation of its arrival,’ Quast blurted. The Chaplain snarled and leaning down tore the scroll from the approbator’s fingers. As the Excoriator read, Quast climbed awkwardly to his feet and brushed gore from his robes. ‘They sent long-range astrotelepathic requests to the Viper Legion at Hellionii Reticuli, Second Company Novamarines stationed at Belis Quora and the Angels Eradicant at Port Kreel. They even sent to the Vanaheim Cordon, in full knowledge of its futility. That the Imperial Fists, the Exorcists and the Grey Knights stationed there would not leave the line of defence for fear that the Keeler Comet and trailing Cholercaust might resume its progress on towards Ancient Terra. The Adeptus Astartes wouldn’t leave Terra open to attack to help defend a tiny Ecclesiarchy cemetery world. Their allegiance is to the living, not the dead. The Cerberus set out from your home world of Eschara and no astrotelepathic transmission was sent there. You are too distant a prospect, given the time constraints of the Cholercaust’s arrival.’

‘How did you come by this information?’ Balshazar demanded, scanning the vellum transcript in his ceramite fingertips.

Quast hesitated. ‘My Lord Ehrensperger maintains a choir of powerful astropaths aboard his personal Black Ship. They have instructions to listen for telepathic messages and to scan those communiqués for motifs relating to the Ordo Obsoletus’s work.’

‘Your inquisitor lord roams the galaxy, eavesdropping on the communications of others?’ Balshazar marvelled. ‘Again, how like the Holy Ordos. How pathetic. Then specimens like your good self are dispatched to investigate the promise of information and authenticate its relevance.’

Quast nodded, allowing the slurs to wash over him.

‘Our choir intercepted a psychic distress signal in an Adeptus Astartes code, relayed through the Stroika-Six Observium Array but originating from this very world.’

‘I should have you flayed for even that,’ the Santiarch growled. ‘Those were Adeptus Astartes words for Adeptus Astartes ears, information not meant for mere mortals such as yourself.’

‘I’m not sure it was meant for the Emperor’s Angels, either,’ Quast told the Excoriator. ‘The message transcript in your hand contains a report of planetary invasion and a request for reinforcement, followed by a direct appeal to the God-Emperor of Mankind for assistance. For intervention. For a miracle.’

Balshazar scanned the words to which the approbator was referring.

‘A simple prayer,’ the Santiarch said. ‘Open reverence to the father of our very own. I hope that such benediction is not absent from the prosecution of your own work, approbator.’

‘A prayer,’ Quast echoed. ‘My master reached the same conclusion. Until I showed him the intended destination of the message.’

Balshazar located the astrotelepathic terminus on the crumpled vellum. ‘Ancient Terra…’

Quast nodded. ‘The Excoriators did not prevail on Certus-Minor. They are all dead. Yet the Cholercaust was defeated. I do not know what happened here. What I do know is that one of your Librarians made a direct appeal to Holy Terra, to the God-Emperor of Mankind for a miracle, and that appeal seems to have been answered.’

The Space Marine and approbator locked gazes. ‘And that is reason enough for the Ordo Obsoletus’s involvement, so please, Santiarch, now tell me what you and three companies of your Excoriators are really doing here.’

The Chaplain’s mangled face creased with vexation. His anger had dissipated and his brow now furrowed with genuine conflict. As his lips began to form around a response to the approbator’s request, the storm trooper sergeant jogged up behind him.

‘Approbator!’

‘Yes, sergeant,’ Quast replied with obvious displeasure. His eyes remained on the hulking Santiarch.

‘Report just in. One of the frater burn teams has found a survivor.’

Both Quast and Balshazar turned.

‘A cemetery worlder?’

‘An Adeptus Astartes.’

Balshazar seemed to sag in his heavy plate.

‘We might get answers to our questions, yet,’ the Santiarch told Quast.

The approbator gave a brief nod. ‘Sergeant, take us to him. Take us to him, right now.’